Related papers: Interactions of distinct quadrupolar nematic collo…
We describe electrophoresis of spherical dielectric particles in a uniformly aligned nematic medium with a negative dielectric anisotropy. A spherical particle that orients the liquid crystal (LC) perpendicularly to its surface moves under…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
The anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces with grafted liquid crystalline chain molecules is studied by computer simulations and within a mean field approach. The computer simulations show that a swollen layer of collectively…
The addition of enough non-adsorbing polymer to an otherwise stable colloidal suspension gives rise to a variety of phase behavior and kinetic arrest due to the depletion attraction induced between the colloids by the polymers. We report a…
We study hydrodynamic interactions of spherical particles in incident Poiseuille flow in a channel with infinite planar walls. The particles are suspended in a Newtonian fluid, and creeping-flow conditions are assumed. Numerical results,…
Chiral additives in the nematic liquid crystal can alter the dynamics of point defects moving on a disclination line. They exert a constant force on defects, leading to the bimodal distribution of distances between them at long times. The…
Up to now it is commonly believed that a colloidal particle suspended in a nematic liquid crystal never produces elastic monopoles because this violates the mechanical equilibrium condition. And the only way to obtain deformations of…
Inverse nematic emulsions in which surfactant-coated water droplets are dispersed in a nematic host fluid have distinctive properties that set them apart from dispersions of two isotropic fluids or of nematic droplets in an isotropic fluid.…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
We consider the effective pseudo-Casimir interaction forces mediated by a nematic liquid-crystalline film bounded by two planar surfaces, one of which imposes a random (disordered) distribution of the preferred anchoring axis in the…
Topological defects that form on surfaces of ordered media, dubbed boojums, are ubiquitous in superfluids, liquid crystals (LCs), Langmuir monolayers, and Bose-Einstein condensates. They determine supercurrents in superfluids, impinge on…
Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…
In the field of liquid crystals, it is well-known that rod-like molecules interacting via long-range attractive interactions or short-range repulsive potentials can exhibit orientational order. In this work, we are interested in what would…
We consider the effects of polydispersity on isotropic-nematic phase equilibria in thermotropic liquid crystals, using a Maier-Saupe theory with factorized interactions. A sufficient spread (approx. 50%) in the interaction strengths of the…
We investigate the emergence of orientational order among +1/2 disclinations in active nematic liquid crystals. Using a combination of theoretical and experimental methods, we show that +1/2 disclinations have short-range antiferromagnetic…
We study indented spherical colloids, interacting via depletion forces. These systems exhibit liquid-vapor phase transitions whose properties are determined by a combination of strong "lock-and-key" bonds and weaker non-specific…
Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…
We report the observation of a doubly-periodic surface defect-pattern in the liquid crystal 8CB, formed during the nematic--smectic A phase transition. The pattern results from the antagonistic alignment of the 8CB molecules, which is…
The past two decades have seen a remarkable progress in the development of synthetic colloidal agents which are capable of creating directed motion in an unbiased environment at the microscale. These self-propelling particles are often…
The surface alignment of lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) can be not only planar (tangential) but also homeotropic, with self-assembled aggregates perpendicular to the substrate, as demonstrated by mapping optical retardation and…